According to the Department of Defense’s own numbers, there are 19,000 sexual assaults on U.S. service men and women every year. These are not attacks from enemy forces, but by fellow soldiers and superior officers. That means roughly half of workplace sexual assaults in the United States are in our military. The only job where one is more likely to be raped is prostitution.

As a high school teacher, how can I encourage my students to consider a career in the military when they can’t even trust their fellow soldiers or commanders not to attack them? And what is Congress doing about this?

Susan Armstrong, St. Paul

Tactics and intent

“DFLer renews battle over St. Croix River development” (March 13) is an excellent article, which should make us all aware of the tactics and intent by legislators like DFL state Sen. Katie Sieben. Legislators can achieve their political objectives by stripping legislative control from local elected government bodies and further empowering non-elected, big central-government organizations — in this case the DNR. Sen. Sieben is not new at this game. She has also been working at stripping local government of its legislative authority and empowering the DNR along the Mississippi River corridor at the cost of hundreds of thousands of your dollars. What’s the tactic? Put a nameless, faceless non-elected government body in place to insulate the legislator from the voter as he or she pursues centralizing control. What’s the intent? Through non-elected central control, the legislator can regulate how we live our lives. And as we are becoming aware, once the legislative process has been circumvented, all you need is a “Pen and Phone” to set policy. Lake Elmo and its legal fight with the Met Council are a good example.

Thomas Hunter, Cottage Grove

Without real answers

After 10 years and millions spent researching the PolyMet mining project, it’s troubling that we are left without real answers to very basic questions.

Health: The PolyMet project will increase Minnesotans’ exposure to five chemicals that the World Health Organization lists as major concerns: mercury, arsenic, lead, asbestos and air pollution.

Water modeling: Hydrologists have been saying that the water data PolyMet used to model the pollution risk are wrong and downplay the predictions about the amount of pollution and how quickly it could move into rivers, streams and groundwater.

Financial assurance: The next step would be setting up a security deposit to protect us, should something go wrong. We need to be confident that whatever deal is struck works for the taxpayers who will be here long after the mining companies have left.

Duration: How long will we be cleaning up pollution following the closure of the mine? It’s reported that water treatment at the site could be necessary for 100 to 200 years. PolyMet has stopped short of giving even a ballpark figure for how long they expect it to take for the site to become pollution-free.

We need to address these questions that Minnesotans raised. Exactly what are we risking in exchange for maybe 20 years of mining?

Michael Buelow, St. Paul

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